Customer Reviews (1)

Intelligent Science Fiction History
Aldiss presents an intelligent history of science fiction from Mary Shelly to 1973.Of course, a lot has been written in the genre since, but this book is still a valuable account of its beginnings.Especially interesting is his comparison of two early sf giants, H.G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Not Free SF Reader
Time travelling count vs literary creator and friend.


If this book had been written by Tomb of Dracula's Marv Wolfman, it might actually have been ok.Or even if it was a Stan Lee Fantastic Four tale and Dracula was Dr Doom.

It wasn't, and it isn't.Frankenstein Unbound is certainly far superior, and there is too much silliness with ghost trains and the like in this book as Stoker and the guy from the earlier novel team up to stop Drac and his dastardly undead doings.

No Attempt to Be Believable.
Spoilers:

There is so much wrong with this book that I couldn't even begin suspending disbelief. Vampires are an ancient species of shapechanging parasites who coexisted with dinosaurs. Time travel can occur on a ghost train and that train can be hijacked by humans who just barely learned of its existence. Hudson Bay was created by a powerful nuclear weapon from the future transported to the distant past in order to annihilate the vampire species . . . bleh!

Vampires through time.
I read any books about vampires, and Dracula in particular. When I picked this I had no idea that it was a gothic Sci Fi book....Dracula has a time machine and knows how to use it. Some of the tale seems a stretch even for Sci Fi. But I enjoyed that Bram Stoker is in this book, a nice tribute. Good thing about the book, once you get pass the begining, the book picks up and is a fun read.

A meandering tale that did not keep my interest
The basic premise of the book is an interesting one and is similar to a theory put forward by Carl Sagan in his book, "The Dragons of Eden." In "Dragons . . ", Sagan argues that the innate fear that humans have of reptiles is a genetic remnant of the struggle for dominance that took place between reptiles and mammals millions of years ago. Aldiss explains the human fear of vampires as another relic of the development of the human species, describing vampires as a separate species, evolved from carrion eaters. While that is an interesting premise, the story line meanders too much to be consistent.
He introduces a train used by the vampires to move through time, and the humans capture it and use it to their advantage, ultimately via time loops that are not well explained. The capture of the train is simply too easy, a device this critical would be very well guarded by the vampires and they would have mounted an all-out offensive to recapture it. The ultimate bomb used to destroy the vampires exceeds the bounds of the number of "new devices" that are allowed in a science fiction tale.
I did enjoy the inclusion of Bram Stoker, the author of the original Count Dracula vampire story. The description of this man of Victorian times is without question the best part of the book.
This was not a book that kept my attention. The story meanders and the actions of the vampires in allowing the capture and possession of the time train while they are capable of sucking blood from the neck of the thief was just too much. I finished it, but this is one tale that did not excite me.

Some people just shouldn't have time machines...
Dracula Unbound can be summed up like so: What if Dracula had a time machine? This book has some chilling answers to that question. Not just another vampire novel, this story takes you on a frightening time ride where you realize that what could be a dangerous thing in mortal hands is a devastating weapon coupled with the immortal wisdom of Dracula. Too much fun to pass by, so give it a try! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Unremarkable collection of sci-fi for beginners
Perhaps the definition of `Space Opera' has evolved over the decades, but what I consider to be Space Opera in the 21st century differs from what Aldiss deems in the 1970s. Aldiss admits that he wanted the lesser known stories to be in the anthology but he also included some bigger names in the mix (to reel in the superficial sci-fi fans?). Whatever the intended input, the output looks like a grab bag of random sci-fi- very few with qualities of modern Space Opera. Most of the science is groundless (take for instance all of the stories of Venus) and much of it is cheesy (with unremarkable ideas like the proton-gun, the ultradrive and such).

Entry level science fiction for the unsophisticated reader?
Aldiss' idea of a sub-genre he has no faith in?
Cream of the crop golden age sci-fi which I just can't appreciate?
Whatever the case, the book is a keeper for the simple sake of four 4-5 stories below.

Zirn Left Unguarded (Robert Sheckley) - 1/5 - Off to a bad start here. I have no clue WTF Sheckly is on about nor do I understand how this qualifies as space opera. 5pgs

Honeymoon in Space (George Griffith) - 3/5 - Utopian vision of a typically fictional Venus where its man who descends and is greeted by angel-like beings. 7pgs

Tonight the Sky Will Fall! (Daniel F. Galouye) - 3/5 - Some cheesier bits in the longest story, but maintains a good pace to a decent man-creates-reality story. 57pgs

The Star of Life (Edmond Hamilton) - 2/5 - Jealous humans venture to find secret of long-life of alien counterparts, through guile and chance. Yawn. 14pgs

After Ixmal (Jeff Sutton) - 4/5 - Earth supercomputer encounters another intrasolar intelligence and internally debates its godlike powers. 11pgs

Sea Change (Thomas N. Scortia) - 2/5 - Space communication relay station mind struggles with new career choice and possible love interest. 12pgs

Colony (Philip K. Dick) - 4/5 - `The two eyepieces of the microscope had twisted suddenly around his windpipe and were trying to strangle him.' Fun! 18pgs

The Sword of Rhiannon (Leigh Brackett) - 3/5 - Mars archeologist is contacted by a unscrupulous character in possession of a mythical sword. 14pgs

All Summer in a Day (Ray Bradbury) - 3/5 - Once every 7 years, the rain clears and sunbeams kiss the face of Venus. But children will be children. 6pgs

The Mitr (Jack Vance) - 2/5 - Lone colonial child lives with blood sucking beetles, a orating AI and now some human men who have just landed.6pgs

The Storm (AE van Vogt) - 1/5 - Jeez van Vogt, keep a good idea and run instead of island hopping with the damned thing! What a clustermuck. 29pgs

The Paradox Men (Charles L. Harness) - 2/5 - Who is the Thief and why is he going to the sun to destroy the observatory? Nevermind, you'll never find out. 28pgs

Time Fuze (Randall Garrett) - 4/5 - Superluminal craft approaches Alpha Centauri only to see it go nova- highly unlikely event or did we just do that? Oops. 5pgs

The Last Question (Isaac Asimov) - 5/5 - Spanning trillions of years, the ever-expanding supercomputer tackles the same question eon by eon, never finding the solution. 12pgs

Where Stars Flow Like Wine Past the Ports
There seem to be roughly two schools of thought regarding space opera among critics and editors. Some take a purely descriptive approach, viewing it as merely one strand of genre science fiction. This seems to be the orientation of Patricia Monk (1992) in her article, "Not Just Cosmic Skulduggery." Editors David Hartwell and Katheryn Cramer are almost militant descriptive editors.

Other critics argue that there is a qualitative element to space opera. In a rebuttal to Monk's article, Gary Westfahl (1993) contends that it is just not as serious as mainstream science fiction. This is certainly in keeping with Wilson Tucker, who coined the term in 1941. He did not intend it to be a flattering one. Brian W. Aldiss is an editor who falls into this category. This is from his introduction to _Space Opera_ (1974): "Space opera is heady, escapist stuff, charging on without overmuch regard for logic or literacy, while often throwing off great images, excitements, and aspirations" (xi-xii). Again: "Science fiction is for real. Space opera is for fun" (xi). And again: "What space opera does is take a few light years and a pinch of reality and inflate thoroughly with melodrama, dreams, and a seasoning of screwy ideas" (xi). In other words, space opera is what you write when you are letting your hair down and allowing the romantic in you to burst free.

Some of the selections in this anthology seem approptiately space opryish: Robert Sheckley's "Zirn Left Unguarded...," A.E.van Vogt's "The Storm," George Griffith's "Honeymoon in Space," Edmond Hamilton's "The Star of Life," Leigh Brackett's "The Sword of Rhiannon," and Charles L. Harness's "The Paradox Men."

Others seem somewhat odd choices: Daniel F. Galouye's "Tonight the Sky Will Fall," Philip K. Dick's "Colony," Jack Vance's "The Mitr," Ray Bradbury's "All Summer in a Day," and Isaac Asimov's "The Last Question." Good stories one and all, mind you, but not what I would call space opera.
Jeff Sutton's "After Ixmal" and Thomas N. Scoria's "Sea Change" are borderline pieces, but they are ones that I am glad that Aldiss included.

Out of fourteen stories, five-- the van Vogt, the Griffith, the Hamilton, the Brackett, and the Harness-- are excerpts from novels. Again, the quality is impeccable. But I am inclined to think that there should have been a greater balance of short fiction.

Some later critics have complained that Aldiss has a "patronising attitude" toward space opera. There is no law that says that an editor must believe that the stories that he selects must be deathless classics. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the proof of an anthology is in the reading. How well does Aldiss do? There is only one story-- Randall Garrett's "Time Fuze"-- that strikes me as truly minor fare. The rest of the selections range in quality from good to excellent. The truth is that Aldiss is an excellent editor, even when he is dealing with stories that are not his normal cup of tea.

Not Free SF Reader
Aldiss mentions the term space opera may have come from horse opera and soap opera - does that make high fantasy sword opera?

He does say this book is not too serious.

Anyway, from the introduction : "Ideally, the Earth must be i peril, there must be a quest and a man to match the mighty hour.That man must confront aliens and exotic creatures.Space must flow past the ports like wine from a pitcher.Blood must run down the palace steps and ships launch out into the louring dark.there must be a woman farier than the skies and a villain darker than a Black Hole.And all must come right in the end."

He divides the book into four sections

Is Everything an Illusion
Precipices of Light that went Forever Up
Exile is our lot
The Godlike Machines

And "Science fiction is for real. Space opera is for fun. Generally.What space opera does is take a few light years and a pinch of reality and inflate thoroughly with melodrama, dreams, and a seasoning of screwy ideas."
Ray Bradbury not in until it is decided global warming would be rather nice, in Hades.

However, given all that, I am presuming he didn't have an attack of Anthologus Stupidus, and some of the inclusions are deliberate, and he put them in because he wanted to.He does mention a desire to reprint some non-reprinted mag stories.

A six year old could tell you that the Bradbury and Vance shouldn't be in a collection to fit the above, even if they decided that in Hades, hey, Global Warming actually doesn't sound too bad.

Planet is not equal to space, by the above definition.Duh. Likewise no people and vast computer intellectual exercises are probably not going to work for some, either, especially if you get multiple excerpts that don't stand alone so much.While there are some excellent and good stories here, the fitting the category work is poor, and there is plenty of ordinary to no good.


Space Opera : Zirn Left Unguarded the Jenghik Palace in Flame Jon Westerley Dead - Robert Sheckley
Space Opera : The Red Brain
Space Opera : A Honeymoon in Space [excerpt] - George Griffith
Space Opera : Tonight the Sky Will Fall! - Daniel F. Galouye
Space Opera : The Star of Life - Edmond Hamilton
Space Opera : After Ixmal - Jeff Sutton
Space Opera : Sea Change - Thomas N. Scortia
Space Opera : Breaking Point - James E. Gunn
Space Opera : The Sword of Rhiannon [excerpt] - Leigh Brackett
Space Opera : All Summer in a Day - Ray Bradbury
Space Opera : The Mitr - Jack Vance
Space Opera : The Storm - A. E. van Vogt
Space Opera : The Paradox Men [excerpt] - Charles L. Harness
Space Opera : Time Fuze - Randall Garrett
Space Opera : The Last Question - Isaac Asimov
Space Opera : The Answer - Frederic Brown


Spoof Opera.

4 out of 5


This Dust drives me crazy.

3 out of 5


Love star inhabitants.

3 out of 5


Trifid life wish is hot and mossy.

3 out of 5


Psychband Starblast warning.

2.5 out of 5


Different sort of explorer.

2.5 out of 5


Space shrink stress sacrifice.

3.5 out of 5


Direct archaeological experience time.

3.5 out of 5


Jungle play.

2 out of 5


Beach beetle.

2.5 out of 5


Mixed man ship smash lure.

3 out of 5


Sun station Thief confrontation.

4 out of 5


Supralight supernova situation.

4.5 out of 5


Immortal humans breed too fast for the universe.

4 out of 5


Computer god.

3 out of 5





1 out of 5 ... Read more

Product Description
Time Travelers gathers twenty-four tales by the most recognizable names in the genre. Included is the first time-travel story ever written -- penned by American journalist Edward Page Mitchell fourteen years prior to Well's landmark novel. Here, too, is a selection by master of future history Robert A. Heinlein, who's "All You Zombies --" involes a character traveling back and forth through time on a bizarre genetic mission. Also included amont those roming in the fourth dimension are such legendary sci-fi writers as Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, and Philip K. Dick, along with such contemporary voices as William Gibson and Martin Amis. Of course, there is a selection by H. G. Wells --a piece origninally writeen as part of the Time Machine but curiously excised when the book was published. ... Read more

Product Description
Third Printing stated. He roamed through the dim reaches of the remote past and like a phantom, the Dark Woman haunted him at every turn. Was she a hallucination produced by the stresses of his bizarre existence? Or was she a ghost from a future more distant than his own? This novel was first serialized in New Worlds Speculative Fiction in 1967 as "An Age." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Excellent Science-Fiction
This is a very good book. Very good stories fron Aldiss, one if the classic sci-fi witers. ... Read more

Product Description
Is war the only way of reviving an overpopulated, degenerate world? Knowle Noland - ex-convict, ex-traveller and captain of the tramp freighter Trieste Star - has always believed that war was senseless and futile. But faced with starvation and disease in a barren land, where robots and prison gangs tend the poison-drenched countryside, and under the influence of the beautiful Justine, who believes that a global war is the only answer, Knowle begins to hope that a war begun by him will wipe out millions and lead to a better world for the survivors. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Bit of Ludlum, bit of Delany = bit of a trip
In a future where population has expanded (to 27 billion), so has the need for the use of land for agriculture. Those who slave away in the fields are the criminals convicted of petty crimes. Roads and villages have been amputated by the Centralization into the giant cities while the petty criminals have been banished due to `rustification.' To drive this agricultural boom in a time where soil diminishment and erosion are rampant, the delivery of sand to create artificially fertile soil is a growing business. So sets the scene for a pardoned convict, Knowle Noland, to become a sea captain of a largely autonomous behemoth vessel with a crew of three delivering sand.

While the book's synopsis focused on the ecological destruction of earth's water and soil, the actual book focused on the unfolding of a man's hallucinogenic disease and his Ludlum-like African happenings. As said, this Aldiss novel, my third, is much like a Ludlum novel in its politics, espionage and flashbacks. It also has the feel of a Delany novel as its flashbacks and hallucinations tend to be disjointed yet poetic. Much of the novel is also well formed in prose, but when taken all together it's a 126 page piecemeal hallucination, flashback and espionage rush.

Fascinating Novella Set In A Grim Future
The 1960's were a time of utopian hopes, celebrating peace, free love and the brotherhood of all; but also of a deep unease, even a nihilistic fear in the Western World.Surely the Vietnam War, the amoral Nixon Administration and the constant threat of nuclear annihilation fed those fears; conservatives feared the destruction of values and society they had worked hard to attain while their opposite numbers feared their continuation.The developed world's squandering of resources began to be understood by all; no longer did a belching smokestack indicate progress as much as environmental disaster.

At this time, science fiction gave us some of the grimmest writing yet.John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, and Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange are all outstanding examples of the fear and hopelessness authors of the time understood coursed close under the skin of the optimistic face of society.Brian Aldiss's Earthworks is equally representative of this tone.Although nowhere nearly as well known as my other examples, Aldiss's vision may actually be bleaker.It is set in a future which follows all too recognizably from our own--pollution has taken its toll and disease and hunger are so rampant that they have become the identifying characteristic of the time.Although Earthworks is quite short, at only 126 pages, it is a richly detailed and fully convincing portrait; disease and illness make the storytelling hallucinatory at times, leaving the narrator and reader questioning the very nature of reality.Fans of Philip K. Dick will be enthralled by this quality. Aldiss is a superb writer at his very best here.It is a real pity that Earthworks is out of print, but I would definitely recommend it for any science fiction fan search out a used copy. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of Brian W(ilson) Aldiss, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 8092 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
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• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Customer Reviews (1)

The best of the magazine-theme anthologies
The two volumes of this collection constitute one of my favorite science fiction anthologies; a real shame that it's out of print now.It's not that this is a perfect selection of stories (what anthology can boast that?)----rather, it gives a real sense of what it must have been like to be an sf fan back in the late thirties, and grow up reading Astounding, the leading magazine in the field for quite a while.(I realize that nostalgia fora time before I was born could be considered a form of sickness, but let's leave that alone right now.)It starts when John W. Campbell, jr. assumed the editorship, and follows the development of the magazine through the war and up into the early sixties, when Campbell changed its name to Analog.The stories are presented chronologically, 1937-46 in volume one, and 1947-65 in volume two.The intoductory notes steep you in the feel of those days.And aside from the historical and fan/anthropology aspects this is just a damn good anthology.Sure, we've got "Nightfall," "City," "First Contact," "The Little Black Bag," "The Cold Equations," and "Call Me Joe" which have all been anthologized ad infinitum, but there are some rarer gems here as well."Farewell To the Master" by Harry Bates, which was the basis of the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still."By His Bootstraps" the wickedly clever time-paradox story by Heinlein (under the MacDonald pen name) which is perhaps so hard to find because it doesn't happen to fall within his Future History series.Theodore L. Thomas's masterful "The Weather Man," perhaps the quintessential early-sixties Analog story.I wish that they'd chosen "Basic Right" by Eric Frank Russell rather than "The Waitabits" but you can't have everything.This should be in every science fiction reader's library, whether or not they consider themselves an Astounding/Analog reader. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great SF!
Born With the Dead was a fast-paced, yet horribly slow. It left you feeling tired. When a work has that much effect, there's something to it.The Saliva Tree has brilliant use of dialogue. These people are justaverage people living in extraordinary cirucmstances; just what the core ofscience ficiton is. The aliens rather reminded me of truly evil Bunniculas,completelywithout innocencence. A great "alien invader" story.They are both outstanding pieces of literature, and I'm glad to have boughtthis Tor Double. ... Read more